Research group size foldings: a literature review

Abstract

Brazilian and international studies have found reconfigurations in the composition of Research Groups to meet the demands of Science, Technology and Innovation, at the academic, social or innovative level. However, the scenario found in foreign empirical studies is that increasing the number of researchers (unnecessarily/unplanned) can negatively compromise endogenous variables (internal indicators, such as: bibliographic productions; training of human resources, and; research activities) and exogenous variables (qualification of scientific production and of researchers themselves). Thus, this article performs a review of the literature on the consequences of the size of Research Groups in the light of the Scale Income Theory. As for the methodological procedures, it is an explanatory research that adopted the method of deductive hypothetical approach and a literature search was undertaken. The literature review revealed some relevant findings, such as: Smaller groups achieve better performances than Groups with more researchers; there are evident relationships between the growth in the number of researchers in larger groups and a consequent reduction in the average production and citations. Based on the results obtained, it was found that Larger Groups around the world can obtain better returns to scale if they reduce their size by two or three times.